The Dutch government has decided not to permit adoption of electronic voting …

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The Ministry of the Interior in the Netherlands decided last week not to adopt electronic voting machines. The decision was made after reviewing extensive research which indicated that none of the available machines offered adequate privacy and security safeguards.

Developing new equipment that could meet the government's standards was deemed too costly and challenging. Instead, voters will go old-school: marking their choices on paper ballots which will be tabulated by machines. The government has also ordered periodic testing of the tabulation machines in order to ensure that they are consistently reliable.

"As long as there is no good alternative, Netherlands agrees with pencil and paper," the government said in a statement. "Research shows that there can be no guarantee of voter privacy with new voting devices. Electronic voting would require the development of new equipment and a large investment, both in money and organization. The government considers that this offers little value compared with pencil and ballot votes."

This decision has been welcomed by Dutch activist group Wij vertrouwen stemcomputers niet, which translates literally to "We Do Not Trust Voting Machines." Less enthusiastic about the decision is Nedap, a voting machine vendor which told The Register that the technical problems could likely have been resolved.

In the US, we have seen an enormous amount of evidence that electronic voting machines suffer from severe security flaws that pose significant risks to election legitimacy due to the lack of a paper trail and verifiable chain of custody. The potential for hardware failures and election fraud have compelled many governments to revisit their policies and limit usage of the machines. The Dutch government's decision on the matter is unsurprising.